Renegade Terrorism

The Arab world was delighted last week when the U.N. Security Council condemned Israel for the skyjacking of a chartered Iraqi airliner. But mixed with that pleasure was a fear that somehow Palestinian commandos would let Israel off the hook by staging another bloody spectacular, just as they did after Israeli jets shot down a Libyan airliner last March at a cost of 108 lives.

Only nine days later, Palestinian terrorists broke into the Saudi Arabian embassy in Khartoum and killed three diplomats (two Americans, one Belgian), thus turning world indignation away from Israel. Summing up the Arab fears this time was Beirut's highly respected an-Nahar, which urged "Palestinian brothers" to avoid "any operation for the time being, so that the world could not deliberately forget the piracy committed by Israel over Beirut."

But the spotlight shifted--at least for a moment. Another skyjacking occurred within one day after the U.N.

censure, although this one combined high comedy with tragic potential. A modified 707 belonging to Lebanon's Middle East Airlines was 87 minutes out of Benghazi on its way to Beirut when a thin, popeyed, bushy-haired man in a green striped suit whipped a brace of pistols out of his belt, charged into the pilot's cabin and told Captain Adel Kawas: "I want to go to Israel.

Now! If you fool around, I will kill you."

Captain Kawas radioed Tel Aviv's Lod International Airport, only to be told that it was forbidden for him to overfly Israel. "But I have been hijacked, and the hijacker insists on landing in Israel. I am going to land whether you like it or not." After a 20-minute pause, Lod gave Kawas landing instructions. Moments afterward the plane touched down and Israeli troops seized the hijacker, later identified as Mohammed Mahmoud Al-Toumi, 37, a merchant with a Libyan passport, no ostensible links to any terrorist unit, and an obvious overdose of alcohol. Said a stewardess: "He had four Scotches before the hijacking, and he took frequent swigs before we landed."

Why had he hijacked the plane? "I wanted to show the Israelis that not all Arabs are enemies of Israel and the Jews and want to throw them into the ocean."

A humanistic intent, to be sure, but the Israelis who arrested him were pragmatic. "No point in listening to him," said one officer. "He's simply crazy."

Despite the diversion caused by the skyjacking, Israelis still smarted over the U.N. censure. Said Prime Minister Golda Meir: "We have nothing to be ashamed of. Let those who censure us be ashamed--I am sure in their hearts they know we are right."

Some dissenting voices were raised, notably those of the Israel Airline Pilots Association and Histadrut (Labor Union) Secretary-General Yitzhak Ben-Aharon. The liberal morning newspaper Ha'aretz warned that "in the wake of this operation, Israel loses the image of a country which respects the freedom of international civil operation." All but obscured in the debate was the stark fact that in choosing to skyjack the Iraqi Airways flight in hopes of bagging Dr. George Habash, a high-ranking leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Israel in effect had decided that ends justify means. There is a growing urge in Jerusalem to knock out the terrorists once and for all.

But who are those terrorists? There is mounting evidence that the fedayeen movement may well be fraying. This hypothesis is bolstered by the disavowal and condemnation by all political shades of Palestinians of this summer's two major terrorist acts: the Athens Airport butchery (four dead, 54 injured) and the skyjacking of the Japan Air Lines 747 (which eventually was blown up at a Libyan airfield). Though for a time these disavowals were seen as a ploy by the fedayeen groups to escape bad publicity, there are indications now that the terrorists are so disorganized that the deeds might have been committed by fanatics acting on their own.

After a series of interviews with Arab and Western sources, TIME Correspondent Spencer Davidson reports a general hunch that the commando movement has entered a new phase: bloody acts by renegades not controlled by established organizations. Previously, Al-Fatah and the P.F.L.P. had run operations methodically, and Black September's attacks had a modicum of control. But Israel's increasingly successful ability to close its borders to infiltrators, and its policy of retaliatory raids into guerrilla sanctuaries in Lebanon, has forced a reduction in terrorist "spectaculars." This, one Arab source argues, has upset the more radical elements among the terrorists and caused them to hit out on their own.

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